1 YEAR IN THE MAKING

(Watch out, you are entering a text of >4.000 words and partially veeeery loooong phrases. You can’t say, I didn’t warn you!)

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Almost exactly one year ago, same place in beautiful Montenegro, I was working on my website, two weeks before leaving the safe environment of a well-paid employment in a global fashion company.

Now, one year later, it’s time to reflect the first 12 month of self-employment.

It was kind of a rollercoaster ride, this much is true.

It started out well. Already before going into day 1 of my self-employment, I had the first customer. A global lingerie brand, where I was lucky to agree with the CEO and the Advisory Board already some time before end of June 2021 to join the Advisory Board in the Digital area of their business.

I got a nice logo designed by a former colleague, a smooth founding process supported by a dear friend and her husband and I even already expanded to Switzerland with an own little company. Even my website was kind of ready after I realized, that I probably had to do it on my own, as I found no real (back then) affordable other way to do it and why would someone, who tells other people how to run an e-commerce business over the past 20+ years not just develop his own .com on his own? Well, because….have a look at it and you know why??

Happy days and a great start into the new adventure, right?

But why would I give up a good position in a (back then) great company for the depth of the unknown in the first place?

Four reasons:

1.?????I had enough

2.?????I needed time

3.?????I wanted more

4.?????I seek something different

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After 20 years in the Fashion Retail industry, Marketing and E-Commerce, Omni-Channel and CRM in different companies, segments and international scale, the repetitiveness of the business and especially their argumentation and even more so the underlying logic (or actually non logic) simply killed me.

Don’t get me wrong. I am the last person, shying away from hard work, over hours, weekend and vacation work, dedication and loyalty to my employer. You can ask both, my previous bosses and my former teams.

In fact, there were times, where I called myself “the best employee”, that you potentially can have, because I go all in, when I am convinced, that I am doing the right thing and especially when things make good sense. And this was the case for many many years in all of my career. In fact, all my employers gave me always the opportunity not only to create teams or develop something new and great with their investment, even into myself and my leadership skills.

But Retail (Wholesale to me always was btw) as such has become such a repetitive operation, where nobody seems to tackle the urgent and (at least to me at one point) most obvious questions of “what is the right stock in a world of overconsumption and too much of everything?, “how do we excite our consumers beyond discounts?”, “how do we measure success in a way, that “real” collaboration is even possible within an organization?”, “which targets do we need to set to the teams and individuals in order to achieve this?” and by the way, “do we really want to be part of Black Friday?”.

The repetitiveness of the business and especially the recurrency of the same questions to the e-commerce unit like “Why can’t you just grow 50% on top of your +35% plan, because wholesale is tanking or we are missing traffic in our stores, if I just gave you 1 Mio. extra Marketing budget (or why not even without further funding in headcount or Marketing? Uaaaahhh). I was so sick of all of that. Sick to a point, where I in early 2019 was close to a burnout, whatever that is and by which symptoms you want to define it (I know, there is no such “official” disease as a burnout). But no matter the symptoms, I was simply tired of explaining the world over and over again to people who won’t be willing to listen or even if they were willing, still not accepting, that the world is more complex than an excel sheet or a number in a business case, which you can tweak in whichever direction, just as you like or you’d wish it to be. I was tired and I had enough.

Whilst resignation in terms of giving up is not so much my piece of cake, unless when running long distances, resigning is. Apart from two unlucky insolvencies with companies in my early career (not mine just to be clear), it was always me, quitting the tenancy with a company. And no, I didn’t leave bosses in the first place as you usually read on Linkedin. I mostly left “organizations”. Organizations, which were either not fast enough to develop into a direction, which I thought (and proved with the success of the business I was responsible for and beyond) would be the right one. Or organizations, which, as I said, where simply following the wrong overall direction based on the ever same arguments. We had a famous acronym in my last organization, which I deliberately never picked up in my dictionary of leadership phrases towards my team: SMS, standing for “Sell More Shoes”. Of course, this was the purpose of my job in a nutshell and I was good at it. But this is not, why the company I worked for or my team was in the business. It can’t be the purpose of a company, just to always sell more. Especially not a family owned. At least, that’s my strong brand minded conviction, which I also shared with my dear companion in crime, the Creative Director of that specific company, and he agreed.

Which would already take me straight to point 4. on the list. But let’s not rush it.

So, if you are sick of it and you had enough, what is it, that gets you into a position to change something, if you are not an emotionally over reactive person, which I am clearly not. I am very reflective as a person, both in regards to myself and the bigger picture.

Reflection. This is what you need. Thinking about, what needs to change, how, when. And for this, you need time.

But you don’t have time in a top management position. To the opposite. You are driven by your calendar that’s mostly automatically filled by other people’s invites to which ever meeting or call you have to be in. You are determined by your projects, by your boss or by your team (mostly in a good way luckily in my case). You don’t have time to reflect, even if you spend hours in a car commuting the 80km one way from home to work or waiting for your plane to take off on one of your (too many) flights. In those moments, where you might think, you have time to reflect, you just try hard to do anything else BUT thinking. You want to have peace of mind or stupid distraction with a gaming app or Chopin (or Metallica) in your ears. That’s what you want and need at this point in time.

As a consequence, I came to the conclusion at one point, that I needed to buy myself time. Not in the format of a sabbatical, I simply couldn’t afford this with a family and a mortgage on a house. And I am probably too German after all. But at least time to change something and to seek something with more purpose. I know, this sounds like either a very classical midlife crisis topic or nowadays a very fashionable, but tacky buzzword. But at the time, where I was starting to think about making a change and as well being transparent to my organization by telling them mid-2019, it was not as fashionable as today, post Corona, inflation, global climate crisis, Supply Chain issues and a war in the middle of Europe.

So, by resigning without a follow-up job and not an own business in full swing I thought, I’d have the time to reflect, what the future should bring. And partially I must say, it worked out. I suddenly had time from one day to another to do things, I always wanted to do. For example, to start a Video Blog on Linkedin, talking about Leadership, which obviously I was good at and which in the meantime has +20 episodes on things, which were moving me and my teams in the past 20 years of my corporate career. I had time to talk to and catch-up with people, I hadn’t talked for ages on topics of absolutely no whatsoever business of selling the next best thing. I had even time to actually meet people and talk about the future, figuring out new opportunities, options and potential businesses.

At the same time, I was super busy with getting things into order. Founding a company (sorry, two) is nothing, that is done in a weeks’ time in Germany (or elsewhere potentially). Administration, Accounting, Tax, Finance, Registrations, Institutions, Contracts, everything takes a lot of (unproductive) time. So, you end up with spending the day on tons of stuff, but not having the time to do acquisitions or talks that bring any kind of revenue.

And on top, I didn’t even really know, what kind of business I was looking for. One of the reasons to leave the corporate retail career behind was, that I didn’t want to spend any more time in that industry, which fed me and my family for the past 20 something years. Or to put it differently I used to say: I don’t want to die in Retail!

I wanted more. Not more in terms of more money, more responsibility, more team members. I felt, that in the future and “at my age” (I know, how terrible that sounds), you might need more eggs in the basket. Meaning, that if suddenly the company, that you have sacrificed the majority of your work force over decades is yet finally taken over by this Chinese investment fund and you are pushed out faster than light and getting replaced by somebody from the fund or the dog of the facility manager, you need to have other income streams to fall back on. And I am not talking about stock options, Real Estate etc.. I still want to work. I like working very much. I like to create something new and work with team members on improving stuff, getting shit done for the best of the customer and the company. And also, in my corporate life, despite being asked several times, if I could join a Board as Digital Advisor I was told so by my management, that this is unfortunately not possible.

And finally, the consequence of “having enough” of something was that I was seeking for something new. I mean really new, not just the next best job or the next higher level and position on the ladder. Something, with more purpose, addressing the huge global issues, that we are facing these days in terms of overconsumption and climate crisis, or the redefinition of the growth paradigm as such. Reason being, why I decided to engage in an Executive Education with Cambridge Judge Business School on “Circular Economy and Sustainable Strategies”. This should pave the way to a more purposeful profession and living. So, after finishing the course, I was investigating a lot in that area and also spending a lot of time and effort, to get a foot in the door, both on what exact area out of this huge topic of ESG and CSR I would see myself in the future and do the people in this area also consider me as suitable for any kind of engagement. The latter turned out to be not so easy. I am perceived as a Sales & Marketing and E-Commerce and Omni-Channel guy, not as a sustainability expert, which I am also clearly not, just by spending 6 weeks on a course, but am convinced I could still add value.

At the same time, your normal life goes on. House, car, family, kids, vacation. This means invoices and costs. So, at one point, income is key. And as I am a planner, I was of course planning with a certain, very generous, amount of time, which we could do without any income and continue living our life that we were used to, not having an income does something with you. No matter how good your plan or how high your buffer is. At least, if you don’t have unlimited funds or are going completely bazooka on your previous standards and concept of living. Which I was clearly not willing to do!

After a while in the state of trying to find what should build the basis of giving the space to explore the “more” and the “new”, I got more and more nervous, what it could be, that generates revenue. I did not have a product. I WAS the product. And of course, I am not a dreamer. I knew, that nobody out there is waiting for me and that it takes time to spread the news, acquiring the first customer and from then on, the second and the third and so on. But little did I know, how difficult it is, despite the fact that people more experienced than me in this situation were comforting me a lot in terms of how long and what it takes to become successful in that self-employment thingy, which I deliberately engaged in.

Here's a non-exhaustive list of the activities during the first 3 months, which had little to no immediate monetary outcome at that point in time, but eventually cost a lot of time and effort:

-???????My beloved #TGIF Linkedin videos

-???????Personal branding exercises

-???????Talking to FFF as I learned, Fools, Friends and Family (well not so much in terms of business)

-???????Engaging in Impact Investment and ESG Finance topics

-???????Starting conversations with a former colleague and friend on a potential business collaboration

-???????Creating a pitch deck on a sustainable project around Kite Surfing and sharing with several contacts from the (investment) industry as I read somewhere, that you should do, what you love

-???????Going back and forth whether or whether not the Swiss entity makes sense

-???????Fighting with my former employer about my well-deserved bonus payment

-???????Talking to former colleagues, who tried the same as me at the same time

-???????Waiting for my ex-boss to get his venture going on which he promised to put me on board

-???????Optimizing the structure, content, wording (thanks to the support of a native speaker) and look and feel of my own website

-???????Get the systems up and running

-???????Writing tons of messages on LinkedIn to former colleagues in new positions

-???????Connecting to new people in the sustainability industry (if this even exists)

-???????Reading smart books about Strategic Business Development, written by a dear friend

-???????Buying office furniture and equipment

-???????Talking to people who’ve been there and done that

-???????Changing a former agency into a potential client

-???????Going on an uneasy vacation, knowing that this would create another hole in the ground

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With all of the above and more going on 3 months in the new world, I found myself pretty exhausted by beginning of October 2021 and starting to ask myself, if this was all worth it. But look at it. Would I have had the time to do all the above in an employment? No, definitely not. So, all good. That was the exploration phase. But where’s the money now coming from?

Partially, it’s coming from coincidental events and follow-ups on the above. For example, have I, thanks to the presentation of my “Kitesquare – a sustainable market place around water sports” pitch deck, got to know a smart and kind completely new business contact, who has not only introduced me to the existence of a whole new revenue model (reminder: more eggs in the basket), but also right away has given me the opportunity to engage in this new model, which only 4 months later resulted in the first really new and by then already 3rd revenue stream beyond the Board activity and the classical consulting. Which was the 2nd stream to create some revenue based on two actions.

First action in the consultancy area was the patience and stamina in a positive way talking to my now business partner, who revealed his plans to me early summer and which is now the second biggest customer to me with a fun team and diverse projects, that we are working on together. Hopefully much more to come in the near future!

Second was me grasping a momentum of “don’t tell me what you want, I tell you what you need”. It’s not the first time, I quote this saying. It’s quite old actually and came from one of my former employers from the Retail industry. But it’s even more so relevant for consultancy. Because nobody is coming to you with a ready-made project saying: Can you do this for me? At least, I have not experienced this so far. It’s you, who has to come up with the project by either knowing, researching or anticipating the issue and the solution to it. And this is what I did, realized the momentum, spend ?two days mapping out a 6 weeks strategy project, presenting it to the CEO without pricing and found a reasonable way to fund it after general approval for the direction. Helas! My first ever own acquired project and by now my biggest customer.

So here they are, the first three eggs in the basket. But this shall not be the end.

At the same time, it also comes with a price. With more and more “paid” work, you risk to forget, that you still need to do acquisition to a certain extend in order to create alternatives, in case one egg falls out of the basket, which is always very likely. Or you want to create smaller eggs of the same kind in your basket, which also requires additional effort, which should not compromise on the existing ones.

So, what do you do? You streamline your business and cut off everything, which doesn’t have a good chance to succeed at a certain point (actually the point is more now than anywhere in the future) or which simply costs too much effort for the outcome it generates. One thing, which had to die in my case, was the Swiss entity, which I decided to not get to real life before I got the first customer, simply because it didn’t make sense in the end. Whilst it was hard to accept, had I spent so much thinking and administrative effort on it. Disappointing, but reasonable!

Others were projects, which didn’t apparently spark enough fire at my potential customers or where the one decisive trigger wasn’t pulled to kick if off. Some of those, I stopped completely, some I boiled down to what still makes sense to me or is close to my heart and I consider it worth the effort.

Some also got resolved positively but were a one-off. Or they got solved for me, which is of course the most frustrating.

And finally, some, especially those related to “I seek something new” are still ongoing while still not creating any revenue, because I don’t want to give up on that topic of sustainability.

With all of the above, I found myself in February 2022, 7 months in the self-employment, working 24/7 on three different devices at the same time (I know, multitasking is a myth, especially for men??!). I managed to stem my ongoing paid projects, at the same time do some acquisition and had my financial and accounting business under control for the first time during this new adventure. And planned a weekend trip to Venice with my family to attend the last days of “Carnival in Venice”.

And then it happened, what changed a lot. On our route, me steering the car, my body suddenly “switched off” or “went quickly on mute”. I get an almost seizure while driving on the motorway close to Zurich. I manage to pull over and park the car. A trip to the next emergency room follows and a lot of other examinations post leaving the emergency room after three hours with the diagnosis of “Physically, everything is okay, Mr. Galler” in hand. And off we continue to Venice…

I will spare you the details of it and how it is still keeping me busy, finding out what happened and meditating through the psychological consequences, but this event as such is a “Z?sur”, a clear cut between what was before and what has been and will be after. And it clearly has to be part of the story, also in this public forum. Because it puts things into perspective and you could start asking yourself, no - I have to ask myself: Was it worth it? Of course, strongly assuming that the different situation of a self-employment with all consequences is the trigger or at least part of the reason, why this happened.

So, looking back after one year, was it worth it? To quit security and seek change and purpose? Especially and objectively considering the four reasons, why I decided to take the step. Here’s a quick reminder:

1.?????I had enough

2.?????I needed time

3.?????I wanted more

4.?????I seek something different

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To point 1:

Am I “out”? Out of the industry and the stress, that it creates? No, clearly not. Retail is still my biggest revenue stream. But in a different shape and form and not on an everyday level with all the little or bigger hick-ups, issues, accusations, challenges and impossible tasks put to you. It’s still there and it’s probably here to stay, because this is what I am good at. But it’s different and it’s good (at least acceptable) ??

To point 2:

Do I now have “more time”? Time to do different things? Definitely yes! I also have more freedom. Do I have more time for myself or less work? Probably not. I am also still not there to call myself a digital nomad, going on the kite board in the morning or afternoon hours and working from the beach the rest of the day. And I’m not really sure, if this is fitting to my concept of life anyhow. But in essence, my time management is more flexible, more self-managed and offers more choices.

To point 3:

Do I have more? More of what? More money? No, definitely not. More eggs in the basket? Defo, yes! More time (see above)? Maybe. More fun? Don’t know yet. I miss a or my team. I sincerely do! I was in the lucky position of always having great and talented team members and employees, which made it a lot of more fun for me, than being in home office all alone. More freedom? For sure.

And lastly to point 4:

Here I can clearly say, I am still seeking. Not only what it is, that I am seeking, but also by when I will be feeling in the position to go all-in to reach out for it, once I know, what it is.

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So, 3 out of 4. Tick! All good, you could say, right? Okay, here’s the caveat. This was the objective evaluation. On the subjective, also considering my syncope (the medical expression for a seizure), I am sometimes still wondering, what had happened, had I stayed with my employer, employment or any other job. You don’t know that after all, so it’s a bit pointless to dwell on it. What I can say though with absolute certainty, that whenever I got a call from a headhunter in the past 12 months (and I had several) on also partially very interesting positions, which would have been enticing throughout my corporate career, I was not intrigued.

And I guess this is the best sign of, after one year, I can call the endeavor a preliminary success, no matter the unpleasant effects and outcomes throughout those first 12 months.

I did it, it’s rolling and I am very proud of myself.